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Friday, November 25, 2016

Back at the house that night, Paxton
was trying to play the guitar. Just four days earlier, while working in the
south garden, he’d felt the unexpected inspiration to pick up the instrument
back up, something he hadn’t done in over a year. He’d stopped working that
afternoon, instead spending the next eight hours playing almost continuously,
running his fingers through every song he could remember, and even some he
couldn’t.

But now his stomach felt heavy. He
tried to sing a song he’d sung a thousand times before, but his mouth was too
dry. After fifteen minutes of half-cocked effort, he placed the guitar back in
its case and snapped the latches closed.

He threw down the last gulp of a
whiskey bottle from the back of the dusty cabinet.

Paxton resumed his earlier pacing.
Darkness had fallen. Culligan stood outside, his silhouette just visible
through the window in the faint light of a waxing gibbous. He was staring in,
watching Paxton. A pewter kettle swayed lazily above a low-burning fire on the
western side of the room. On the wall above it hung various tools for
carpentry, horse-shooing, and leather work. Some were antiques, not that that
mattered.

Though Paxton had been home over an
hour, his boots were still on. Each step dropped with a double-tap on the
hardwood floor. He did not pace simply back and forth but in an erratic swirl,
visiting nearly every corner of the one-floor, four-bedroom house. Several
other lanterns were lit, the house alive with light. This, too, disturbed
Culligan, who’d grown accustomed to Paxton’s self-imposed darkness.

A plate of boiled beans was growing
cold on a table near the fire. Paxton stumbled upon them occasionally as he
pace, pausing each time for a small bite with a wooden fork.

He was talking out loud. Or perhaps to
Culligan, who he believed could understand him whether he heard the words or
not.

“We shouldn’t go, Culligan. I hate that
place. I swore we’d never go back.” He stopped pacing, his eyes blank in
thought. “But maybe we need this. It has
been four years….” He resumed walking. “I know, Cull! You don’t have to tell me
about last time! Why do you think I haven’t gone back?” He returned to the
hearth, ladling water into a ceramic mug for tea. “No, it won’t do any good.
There is nothing for me there. We can manage, Cull. We got everything we need.”

Paxton sat at his dining room table,
looking directly out the window at Culligan who stared back through the glass.
He didn’t speak while he ate. He kept picturing the helicopter, combing his
mind through the details. His hand trembled as he hoisted his spoon for a bite.

“Yeah,” he said out loud in a tone of
reluctant concession. “We have to go.”

Finding some resolution, his hand
steadied and he finished his meal.

*

It started
raining half an hour later. Culligan swooshed his tail happily when Paxton
stepped outside to organize their gear for the following morning. He slid a
rocking chair against the wall, dropped his saddle onto a wooden chest, and
straightened a rusting horseshoe upright against the porch column. Running his
hand on Culligan’s side, he circled to the horse’s front.

“Summer
solstice tomorrow.” He walked to the north side of the house to his toolbox
where he snatched several items and stuffed them into a canvas satchel. Though
town was only 15 miles, he hadn’t made the journey in almost a half-decade. His
father had ingrained it into him over and over: it’s always best to be
over-prepared. He added a hammer, wrench, multi-tool, three types of knives,
measuring tape and several boxes of nails.

He loaded a
smattering of tools into the saddle bags: saw, hatchet, matches, knives, can
opener, nails, screws, shaving razor, screwdrivers, wrenches, ammo. The plan
was to be back that same night, but things did not always go according to plan.
“Always be over-prepared, Paxton,” he said out loud, mimicking the sound of his
father’s drawl.

Once the
usual accoutrements had been assembled, Paxton stepped out from under the eaves
to glimpse the stars emerging behind the curtain of rain. The clouds split
lengthwise across the sky, undraping a brilliant moon. The rain fell so lightly
it was dry as soon as it touched his bare skin. He removed his hat—something he
rarely did—and let the fine mist fall on his balding head.

There is one more place I have to go. He stepped out into the night.

*

It wasn’t
far, just far enough to be safe had anyone come looking. And there was a time when they had. Of course, Paxton wasn’t in the
mood to think about that now.

A half mile
up the creek, the entrance was concealed in an insignificant copse of trees
away from the trail and prying eyes. Paxton had to crawl to get in. There was
an iron gate fitted precisely into a concrete bunker, locked tightly with a
bolt-cutter resistant system. People had called his dad crazy for building it.

Eight steps
led into the bunker, whose walls, Paxton knew, were two-foot-thick
rebar-reinforced concrete. This was where his father kept his finest treasures.
Paxton walked underneath row after row of canned gods, some five years beyond
their expiration, to the middle segment of the 800 square foot structure.
Paxton did not need to search; he went immediately for two ammo cans high on
the top-right shelf. The sound of the rusty latches echoed like a firecracker
when he flipped them open. Paxton gathered a dozen sets of primary-lithium
batteries, testing each on a sleek silver flashlight before dropping them into
his satchel.

“Just like
new. It pays to buy the best of the best. Now more than ever, eh Cull?” He
remembered the horse was back at the house. The rain was intensifying; he could
hear it roar down above him. He grabbed a full 1-gallon gas can. Just in case. In the next room, he
filled an army-green satchel with rice, jerky, dried fruit and beans and
searched through the canned goods, selecting any less than three years past its
expiration.

Paxton
opened a gun safe in the very back. It was important, even on a short journey,
to always have options. “Survival is largely who has the most efficient tool,”
his father used to say. “And the better brain to use it.” Paxton grabbed a .50
caliber sniper rifle and his father’s sawed-off shotgun. Those paired with his
grandfather’s Colt—which he kept always in hands reach—and a knife or two for
the dirty, in-close work and he figured he had the edge in almost any scenario.

Back at the
house, Paxton calmed an agitated Culligan and began organizing everything into
taxonomized piles on the living room floor. His bedroom closet was lined with
rows of nearly indistinguishable white, black or light-blue button-up shirts
paired with a handful of vests. He grabbed one of each.

Paxton
halted in front of the oval mirror on his mother’s antique apothecary table.
Increasingly in recent years his own reflection had become hard to see, like
his face had been smudged by a clumsy eraser. There was no logic to it. No
reason his eyes—which saw everything else in near-perfect clarity—weren’t up
for the task. But the longer he stared the more the details of his face
dissolved away into nothing. But tonight every square inch was visible in full
verisimilitude. His beard was coarse and uneven. He spotted a gray hair on the
left side of his chin. Leaning in closer, he was alarmed to discover it wasn’t
alone.

The rain
continued and Culligan wandered to a grove of willows away from the house as he
sometimes did when he was agitated. Inside, Paxton finally laid down for a few
hours’ sleep in the comfort of his own bed. First
light we’ll hit the road.

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

The road snaked
across the desert landscape in broad S-curves, pulling left around a bluff
here, and back to the right around a mesa there. Rodger whistled as he drove,
tossing an empty soda bottle over his shoulder. His CD player was malfunctioning
and the radio had been reduced to fuzz not long after the Colorado/Utah border.
He filled the air instead with the sound of his own voice, which frightened him
at first but he eventually became accustomed to and now liked a great deal.

Rodger examined himself
in the mirror, turning his head from side to side. He thought his appearance to
be quite handsome but, on closer inspection, pushed the mirror aside until all
he could see was the black road slithering away behind him.

The desert, he
thought. It even looks hot. Rock the color of fire, air melting and dancing
like flame, the sky set alight by the waning and waxing sun. He smiled at
his poetry and wondered if he would be as brilliant as a song writer.

The highway sank over
the crest of a hill and descended towards a tiny white cluster of trailers and
buildings in the distance. It was the beginning of Indian lands, the worst part
of the drive as far as Rodger was concerned. The derelict remains of a culture
ruined by a western way of life they didn’t understand. They’ve given up, thought
Rodger. They simply wait in this wretched heat for their turn to sink back
into the earth, the mirror reverse of how they believe they were created.

Rodger
turned the mirror back to his face. “How,” he greeted himself, waving his right
hand in a rigid circle. The sound of his voice made him grin.

“How,” he responded.
Quickly, he lost interest and turned his attention, as he frequently did, to
his future as a rock and roller. He supposed he’d have to buy an instrument and
learn how to play. It’s got to be a guitar, he thought. Girls like a
man that can play the guitar. Keyboardists and bass players are pussies.

Rodger glanced down at
the needle of his gas gauge and grumbled, flicking it hopelessly with his right
index finger. He hated having to stop now. There was little choice, however, as
so few pumps dotted the landscape. He hated the reservation with its beggars
and feral dogs fighting for scraps in the grocery store parking lot. And he
hated the heat.

The first of the
trailers zoomed past his windows. Rodger couldn’t imagine living in such
conditions. They were so isolated and lonely with miles of white hot desert
between them. What did these people have? What did they do? Nothing but the
undying heat of the desert and the inexorable reverse of the clock in which
their own share of time was sadly fading.

A crude, hand-painted
sign caught Robert’s attention as the frequency of the trailers increased. Navajo
Pride it declared in red spray paint. Looking around at the assemblage of
poverty and despair, Rodger wondered what exactly there was to be proud of.
Perhaps the sign was a melancholy declaration, satirically placed. Or maybe it
would be better with a question mark at the end.

?

His destination wasn’t
far outside of this little town. Rodger wanted to make sure before going about
the business he’d come all this way to go about his gas tank was full. That way
tomorrow, when he was done, he could make a quick escape. He wanted to put as
many black-topped miles between himself and this forsaken country as possible.

He pulled into the
derelict town’s lone gas station; a place where the tumbleweeds were real and
skin was reddish-brown. Rodger’s car, the shining black symbol of his success,
came to a rest and the fluids settled after so many miles and hours of sloshing
back and forth. When he stepped from the car, he was immediately overtaken by
the heat. He paused when he reached his full height and brushed sweat from his
forehead with the back of his sleeve. The black surface of his car was hot
enough to reduce his skin to wrinkled blisters with too prolonged a touch. He
cussed under his breath that there was no pay-at-the-pump. Life is primitive in the wasteland. In a place like this, he
preferred to do his business anonymously.

Inside, it was clear he
was the minority. He did his best to blend in. A rack beside the front counter
was loaded with cassette tapes of artists that had gone out of style no fewer
than fifteen years earlier. A chubby Navajo behind the counter did not smile at
him as he paid for gas as quick as possible. He couldn’t wait to get out of the
store and out of town.

Back outside a massive
Indian with a lopsided gait circled around his car and stared at it with the
same interest that the feral dogs had when spying a piece of meat. Rodger
slowed his pace and tried to talk himself out of his irritation. He wasn’t out
here to pump up his blood pressure. He was here to find new purpose. He passed
the Indian without a word, unlocked the door, and made to enter the driver’s
door.

“It’s a nice car,” the
man said. Rodger looked at the man with impatience.

“Thanks.” He smiled
sarcastically.

“Hey, could you help me
out? I just had back surgery and I need some money.”

Rodger started to lower
himself into the car to drive away but the Indian stuck his arm through the
door to keep Rodger from closing it. “Anything will help.”

Rodger felt a rising
panic. His mind was filled suddenly with fears of being drug out of the car and
robbed or beaten or, even worse, scalped. He had to get rid of the beggar and
fast, so he retrieved his hand from his pocket and handed him the first bill
that his fingers had clasped around. “Here,” he spat. He shuddered when saw the
numbers printed on the bill’s surface: $100. Judging by his reaction, the Indian was
more surprised than Rodger and pulled away from the car to examine the bill
and make sure it wasn’t fake. This gave Rodger the chance to slam his door and
punch the lock button. Before the
door was fully shut, he was in gear and speeding away. The Indian, still
entranced by the bill as if it were lost treasure, disappeared in the brown fog
Rodger left behind.

The soda bottle he’d
earlier discarded was rolling obnoxiously across the floor banging and
clamoring against the doors and seats. Allowing an empty coke bottle to roll
around on his usually immaculate floor was exactly the sort of change he was
trying to make. He was “loosening” up. But the Indian had him rattled. He
grabbed the empty bottle and ejected it out his window.

“Fuck it,” he said aloud
and felt better.

Rodger’s destination was
a small canyon just ten miles outside of the village. A friend had told him
about it. It was a canyon where he could re-connect and re-define. He could
brag about it Monday at the office. The secretaries would listen with rapture.
Maybe he’d start working out after work or, even better yet, before
work. Everyone would notice.

A few miles later, his
car rolled to a halt at the parking lot that had been described to him. He
looked out tentatively at the enormous bulges of rock and the twisted juniper
trees and the ankle high beds of knives and needles that called themselves
cacti. The whole idea was dripping with naiveté. It had been foolish of him
to come and he knew it.

But it was too late. He
had already made up his mind. He couldn’t stand the thought of going back and
explaining to everyone back at work why his sojourn—the one he’d made such a
deal of explaining Friday—had failed. The trunk popped open and he retrieved
the two newest additions to his garage: a bright, Everest-worthy backpack and
the stoutest hiking boots the outdoor store had to offer. He laid them both
side-by-side in the sand.

“Christ, it’s hot,” he
said wiping his forehead again. He stuffed his feet into the new boots, ripping
off a tag that was attached to the eyehole of the highest shoelace rung. The
stiff shoes felt strange on his feet.

A few minutes later he
was moving towards the great swell of orange and white sandstone that arced
into the sky in front of him. It was an alluring and threatening place and, for
a moment, Rodger’s sense that he was making a mistake became more powerful. He
turned back to his black car. Already it was tiny in contrast to the immensity
of the desert. But it looked comforting, like sanctuary.

“Christ, it’s hot,” he
repeated. He retrieved his water bottle from his backpack and took a long
drink. Already he was parched.

Rodger walked through
what remained of the day until the sun was set afire and the sky matched the
hell-red of the bluffs and mesas. The canyon closed in around him and its
shadowy faces were drained of texture as the light waned. Rodger picked a
campsite at the foot of the canyon’s walls and pulled his new boots off
blistered feet. He took a moment to wiggle his toes and examine the damage he’d
done. Though he knew the hike out would be painful the following day, he
relished the idea of having a good limp when he returned to work on Monday. A
limp is always good for conversation. When people asked how he got it he could
sound brave and get sympathy.

Rodger fumbled with his
tent until well after dark, muttering curses at increasing volume as he fumbled
with the poles and the directions and
struggled find a spot without rocks to pound in the stakes. When the
tent was finally erected—though it looked somehow lopsided—Rodger was
exhausted. Instead of making dinner as planned he threw a few mouthfuls of
trail mix down his throat and wiggled into his sleeping bag to sleep.

* * *

The sun had barely begun
to rise the following morning when Rodger decided to break camp and flee the
forsaken desert. He had slept terribly, as bad as any night in the entirety of
his life. He’d spent most of the night awake, listening to the sighs and moans
of the desert and expecting at any moment some great, desert beast to take
interest in him. By morning, when the sun was touching the tops of the canyon
walls, he felt braver and by the time camp was broken, he couldn’t believe his
foolishness—his chicken-shitedness, as he’d been calling it—the night before.

It was unbearably hot
already by the time he’d started his long retreat on blistered, battered feet.
He plodded along occasionally stumbling over protuberant bulges of sandstone
and small, sharp-cornered boulders. He couldn’t be sure how far into the canyon
he’d walked, but it sure as hell seemed farther on the way out.

At long last the terrain
became familiar again and he realized he was looking at the same landscape he’d
seen from his car the day before only from the opposite direction. He rounded a
final corner and his car was visible as a insignificant, black spot below in
the distance. He stood looking down on his vehicle and the road with a certain
melancholy, feeling as if he were at the end of some great accomplishment. He
beat the sweat off his brow for what he hoped would be the final time.

Just one last pitch of
steep rock and I’ll be free, he thought. His energy was perking. He
felt as if he’d defeated the canyon and defeated nature. He turned back to the
canyon from which he’d emerged and upraised his middle finger in contempt.
Satisfied, he began to scramble down the steep, rocky slope in high spirits.

But halfway down, disaster
struck. A large rock came loose under his step and his balance was compromised.
He tumbled once, rolling sideways and feeling a number of sharp, sandstone
teeth biting at various places along his body. He cried out once in pain, but
his voice was hollow and unnatural in his head. He dug his blistered feet into
the dirt and rocks, trying to arrest his momentum, but it slipped into the
crevice between two boulders. Sharp pain shot up his leg and back as his foot
settled and refused to move. His body flung forward around the fulcrum of his
pinned ankle. He heard the bone in his leg snap and knew without question it
was broken.

His body came to rest.
Hot tears were already dripping from his eyes. He tried to work his leg free
from the boulders that had broken it but it would not budge. It was pain to
even try. From his awkward position he tried to tug his legs free with his
hands but it didn’t so much as flinch. After an hour he laid back and rested.

Nature, he
thought. I hate it. As the heat and dehydration sunk deep tendrils into
Rodger’s mind he began to doze off into dreams of rock and roll and groupies.

* * *

A few days later
a lone Navajo emerged from the same canyon. In his hand were the leaves and
stems of a variety of plants both fragrant and colorful. He came upon the scene
of the white man whose leg was splintered and pinned. He reached down and felt
the man’s silent neck. There was nothing to do. He whispered a few words in his
native tongue and stepped around the dead man in his path. At the road he walked
past the man’s black car and turned left towards town.

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Friday, November 18, 2016

His
father was the last person he’d seen alive and that was 3,394 days ago.

There
was no reason to think about that now, standing alone in a Colorado meadow with
a mattock in his hand and a hot wind exhaling against his face. He hoisted the
iron high above his head and brought it down with a shoop in the soil.

High
above, a lone cloud drifted between him and the sun. He closed his eyes,
relishing the temporary reprieve. But as soon as it was there it was gone, and
the full-strength of the June heat resumed.

Beads
of sweat rolled from his forehead like tiny glass balls as he brought the iron
mattock down again.

Paxton
Raleigh had towed, with some struggle, a red wheelbarrow overloaded with
seedlings, clones and tubers up the decaying trail. The rainy season was on
him, and he would need better food stores if he wanted to survive another
winter like the last.

Paxton and Culligan face the

post-apocalytic world alone

By
the angle of the shadows, Paxton could tell high noon had passed. He propped
the mattock handle-up against an aspen tree. “Lunch time, Culligan,” he said to
his light-brown horse who stood nearby flicking his ears from the flies. Paxton
rummaged through a leather satchel attached to Culligan’s saddle and extracted
a slab of dried meat the size of his palm and a loaf of bread wrapped in a red
handkerchief. He dropped his weight into the flickering shadows of the aspen
leaves and drank deeply.

The
horse snorted. “Don’t get too comfortable now. You know damn well we got ditch
duty. And we have to check the
traps.” The animal twisted his long neck Paxton’s direction. “There’s no
putting that off any longer.” Culligan swished his tail half-heartedly. “And no
back talking, Cull. I said I’d wait and see if it rained and it ain’t.”

The
two had nothing else to say. Paxton worked on his lunch, chewing ravenously and
washing it down with cold water from the creek. When the food was gone, he
pushed himself stagnantly to his feet and stretched, his back crackling like a
fire.

After
mounting Culligan with a protracted effort, Paxton guided him slowly along a
faint trail, switchbacking up a long slope until the valley floor was several
hundred feet below. Paxton reined Culligan to a stop, and drank thirstily from
his canteen.

“The
next two months are going to be like this, Cull,” he said. “The heat takes the
work right out of you.” He looked down on the ranch far below. The aluminum
roof gleamed in the sunlight at the west end of the meadow. Behind it, wider
and longer but not as tall, was the barn.

Paxton
and Culligan stayed motionless for some time. A light breeze did little to
oppress the vicious sun and the heat radiated back from the ground. Don’t forget last winter, he reminded
himself. One more season like that I
won’t be around for the next.

From
this higher vantage, he could see a few scattered clouds building to the west:
a welcome sign. Steering Culligan away, they continued up the trail, slogging
upward for another ten minutes until they crested the long hill at last. Unseen
waterfalls grumbled in the deep canyon below.

With
easier traveling, the tandem made better time, and in just a few minutes, the
trail returned to the water at a wide, motionless marshland. Paxton dismounted,
loosened the mattock and a shovel from the saddle, and stuffed a small pinch of
Copenhagen between his teeth and lower lip.

Culligan
puffed.

“I’m
quitting! Down to one log anyway and it’s all dry.” Culligan turned away.

A
strange wave of déjà vu flooded over him: the warm tickle of nicotine on the
back of his throat bringing back the past in near-perfect fidelity. The
sensation was so lucid and powerful, for a moment he felt as if he toed the
border with one foot in both past and present.

Shaking
off the sensation with a laugh, he turned away from Culligan and hauled his
tools to the creekside.

His
father had dug the old ditch when they’d first bought the ranch many years
before, but disuse and time had steered the water back to its natural path.
This spring, however, Paxton had laid out a plan for the fall he hoped would
yield more food for winter than ever before.

But
before he could start on the ditch, he had to check his traps. He laid his
tools in the dirt and followed a faint trail upstream through head-high
willows. His boots squished in the gluey marshland. At the head of the valley,
the creek spilled from the scree of the high basin above. A small lake formed
at the base of a tumbling cataract at the head of the valley. Paxton worked
through the brush to the northwest corner where he’d set his trap on a
well-beaten game trail.

“Nothing,
Cull,” he said when he got there, forgetting that the horse had stayed behind.
He inspected his handmade trap, tightening the knots, the noose, and replacing
the bait. Farther along the trail, each of the six traps he’d set was the same.

He
returned to the creek where Culligan was swooshing his tail lazily. Paxton
swatted a mosquito from his ear and retrieved leather gloves from his pocket.
He fired Culligan a glance from the corner of his eye.

“Don’t
look at me like that,” he warned. “It’s all random, whether you catch something
or not.”

Paxton
took up the mattock, aimed an angry stroke and sunk it halfway into the mud. The
earth here was tough: full of embedded stones, stubborn roots and dense clay.
“This is gonna take a while, Cull.” He took another swing, striking something
hard three or four inches down. “But a while
is all we have, I guess.”

Paxton
aimed another stroke but paused. A strange thumping noise suddenly surrounded
him. At first he thought he was imagining it: the return of the déjà vu. It
seemed to be coming from the very earth itself.

“Culligan!” he yelled. Dropping the mattock,
he dove behind a thick tangle of scrub oak just as a helicopter exploded over
the ridgeline with frightening intensity. Paxton surged with adrenaline.
Somewhere from his periphery he saw Culligan bolt down the hill.

Even
from his low vantage, he could see the helicopter was white with a navy-blue
tail, bearing no other markings other than a serial #: N7-1482Z. The helicopter hovered not 200
yards north, its rotor wash jerking around the brambles where Paxton hid.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the strange machine drifted his direction until
it was directly overhead. The sound was deafening, filling his ears and sucking
the air from his lungs. He had never heard such a terrible noise, like the
beating wings of a grotesque prehistoric hornet. Not for almost ten years had
he felt such fear.

Culligan
whinnied in the distance, a horrible sound unlike any he’d heard before from
the animal. All Paxton could see through the branches was blowing dust and
twigs. The helicopter was facing and drifting away.

Paxton’s
fear was ebbing. The pilot! There has to
be a pilot! But just when the thought crossed his mind, the helicopter spun
west and rumbled down the valley and away. The wind and noise quickly subsided.
Paxton forced himself to swallow a few deep breaths and sat up straight. The
helicopter was hovering over the ranch. He watched it, still in utter
disbelief.

“Culligan!”
he yelled, yanking his gun from its holster. No longer afraid, Paxton jumped to
his feet and sprinted down the trail, waving frantically at the tail rotor of
the aircraft.

“Wait!
Stop!” he yelled. His lungs burned. His feet tangled on something in the grass
sending him plummeting forward. His pants ripped as his left knee absorbed his
full weight. Paxton ignored the pain and bounced back to his feet. “No!” he
yelled again. “I’m right here!” The helicopter hovered directly over the ranch
for a moment. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, it lifted over Storm
King Mountain and vanished.

Paxton
ran impotently, gasping and bleeding for another 200 yards before collapsing on
the hard ground under a thicket of willows.

“Culligan!”
he yelled again, breaking the new silence. A soft breeze whispered through the
willow branches. On his stomach, he recovered his breath slowly.

So there are more.

But
at the appearance of something so unexpected—something from another life long
ago—his mind had been consumed by the possibility of danger. He hadn’t thought
about the contact that could have
occurred until it was too late.

I’d convinced myself
that the new world was not only okay but actually better.
But the prospect of more represented
by that helicopter had provoked such a feeling that he knew now—lying face down
in the cool grass in a world just as quiet and empty as it had been an hour
earlier—he’d been wrong.

He
became aware of the quiet shuffling of feet and felt a wet nudge on his back.
When he rolled onto his back, he was looking down the twin-barrels of
Culligan’s snout at shockingly close range. The horse snorted.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

"And he sayeth to me, 'My sweet Queen Tala, I took all of my most prized relics, the greatest heirlooms of the greatest house that ever was, and buried them in a chamber so unfathomable it will be forbidden to all but the most worthy suitors. And God help them should they solve its mystery. May their hearts be true, for the power they discover within will awe all the world.' "It is these words, laid out in Omar: the True Story from Those Who Knew Him Dearest that kindled the legend of the Forbidden Chamber, the mythical cache for the treasures of Omar Roberts I, the Hero King. The account is purportedly written by Tala Roberts, Omar I's fourth and final wife. Many scholars, however, posit numerous explanations for why the account and reality might be divergent, from heavy-handed embellishments by a so-called "ghost writer" to intentional deviations from the truth by Tala herself. One popular theory suggests that the book was actually fictionalized much later, perhaps has late as 1350 NE, three and a half centuries after the Hero King's death.Although the legend of Omar's Forbidden Chamber—usually thought to be located in his luxury fortress of Shamala—is perhaps the most broadly-syndicated myth in the modern canon and has drawn the interest of countless historians and tomb raiders for many centuries, no indication of any secret treasure has ever been discovered. So little evidence has been found, in fact, that recent decades has seen a steep decline of interest in the pursuit of the Forbidden Chamber. Chamber Hunters, as they were once called, are now all but extinct.

* * *

"What are you reading?"

The fiery gaze of the sun filtered down through the gossiping leaves of a cottonwood onto Vallario Roberts where he sat beside the crystal-cool water of a murmuring brook.

"Legend of Omar," he replied to his twin sister, Galia, as she wrung soap from a beige tunic. Vallario thumbed the book closed and dropped it into his leather rucksack.

Galia leveled her eyes on him. "You're not thinking about that again, are you?"

"I know you don't believe in it." Her stare was heavier than gravity as he tossed pebbles in silence. "At least it takes my mind off..." He trailed away pathetically. The embarrassment was still too fresh to say the rest. Even to his twin.

Galia scooted closer. "Don't think about it. I'm sure she just—"

"Just what?"

Galia crushed her lips together. "It doesn't matter what she thinks! You're too good for her anyway!"

Val tossed another pebble, more firmly than the last. No one in the family ever faced such an insult.

"Are you excited to see the capital, Val?"

Val was happy to entertain a new subject. "After three weeks in that miserable carriage, I don't care where we stop."

"You never had the stomach for traveling," she laughed, flipping her curly, golden-brown hair over her shoulder.

"It's not that I don't have the stomach for traveling," said Val. "I just...I just have a hard time sleeping on the road."

"We've stayed in inns more than half the nights. And besides, how many times have you left Tahala in your entire life? Honestly?"

"I've left the city!"

"How many times?" She inclined an eyebrow.

"I don't know," he responded evasively. "A few."

"Father is always asking you to come along when we travel. Mother too. But all you do is barricade yourself in the library and pore over books about the Forbidden Chamber."

"I like where we live! Why would I need to leave?" His face was getting hotter.

"Don't get angry!" Galia giggled. "As for myself, as a woman grown, I understand the need to respect and experience culture. I know you are still just a boy...."

Union law defined that a girl came of age at 16 but boys had to wait a full year longer.

"We're the same age!"

"We are not!" Galia added. "I am ten minutes older."

Val was saved from having to concede by a terrific splash. Crystals of water ejected from the pool, soaking both twins. Val jumped up in alarm, tripped over his bag and toppling to the ground.

"Pall!" cried Galia. "I told you not to throw rocks!"

For a moment there was no response. Then, piece-by-piece, their two-years-older brother emerged from a scruff of oak brush, grinning victoriously.

"How could I resist?" Pall boasted. "When you make such easy targets?"

Val dusted himself off. "What have you been doing?"

"Just stretching my legs," Pall responded, but Val noticed his hands fidgeting with something in his pocket. "Tomorrow we'll finally be in the White City. Couldn't come soon enough, if you ask me."

"Oh, please," Galia complained as she inspected her clothes for mud. "You both can be such...cowards."

"I'm just anxious to get to the party," their older brother said with a dismissive wave. "I don't know why father is making us stop. We could be in the capital now if it wasn't for—."

"There you three are!" interrupted a booming voice. A lord in a dazzling violet robe loomed at the top of a small rise, his fists pressed into each hip. "Your father commands your return. The caravan is ready. We have to make it withing range of the city by tonight!" After a pause he added, "It does not do for princes and a princess to be late. The Five Year's Fair will go on with or without you." He spun away and vanished.

"I see Master Sallano is in a wonderful mood," said Pall.

Christofer Sallano was master of counsel to the throne of Shamala. Other than being the top advisor to Val's father and mother, he'd also been a mentor, instructor and friend of Val's since he was a young boy.

The Five Year's Fair will go on with or without you. Val didn't need to be reminded of their destination; his anxiety had been growing like a thundercloud with each passing league. He'd begged to stay behind. There was nothing Val disliked more than crowds and chaos, and this Five Year's Fair was expected to be the largest in decades, perhaps ever. Besides, since he was not yet of age he wouldn't be allowed a vote when the lords and ladies sat down to select the next supreme chancellor.

But of course his father had insisted. This year's fair, he'd informed him, was important for two reasons: first, it marked the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Union, and second, Lady Sandra of House Gonsales—perhaps the most broadly respected supreme chancellor the realm had seen in a century—had reached the end of her 15-year term limit.

"The royal family will all be present," his father had said. And since he was Sean Roberts II, King of Tahala, his word was final.

The three siblings gathered their things and scrambled back to the carriages. To their surprise, the King sat in the driver's seat, grinning merrily.

"Your mother wanted to sleep. I took the excuse to relieve Kiwen of the reins." He smiled down on the siblings. "Entertain the desires of an old man and allow him to enjoy the last of the Lonely Highway with his children!"

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Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Albert
Aldrich looked at the words he’d just written. They were hard, sharp. They
deserved their own paragraph. He flipped his pen over and tapped it anxiously
against the page, wondering if there was more he could say. But after a moment,
the epiphany was fading. Defeated, he stuffed the pen and the moleskin journal
into his sweatshirt pocket and exhaled deeply.

The day
was pristine, one of the best of the summer. Albert sat quietly on the beach,
as he often did, with his back against the carcass of a surf-battered spruce. The
cool breeze from the bay felt comfortable, even refreshing, having none of its
usual bite. The sky was clear and generous views of the Silver Mountains,
usually veiled by fog, could be seen across the water. Closer to land, massive
tankers and fishing vessels crisscrossed their way through the Bering Sea at
the mountains’ base.

Albert
was late but showed no sign of hurry. Inspiration was more important than
punctuality anyway, and the idea for how he could end the story he’d been
writing had taken shape on his walk. Besides, the weather was beautiful, which
was rare in Harbor. The sky was first-prize blue. He watched its reflection
flicker off the placid ocean.

In one
smooth motion, he withdrew his father’s zippo from his cargo pants, ignited it,
and set the end of a small joint ablaze. Smoke plummeted into his lungs. He
dropped the zippo back into his pocket. In the sand in front of him, Albert had
subconsciously traced a shape quite resembling the waist-up profile of a naked woman.
With some embarrassment he made the drawing disappear under a spray of sand.
But not before adding two areola-like pokes.

A
speckled, half-border collie mutt came bounding towards him, dropping a stick
at his feet. The dog laid down with his paws out expectantly, looking—with the
top half of left ear flopped forward—from Albert to the ball.

“No more,
Trigger,” Albert said. His father had given him that name. And trained him
well. Trigger licked his lips, let out a disappointed groan and laid his chin
between his paws.

The loud
toot of The Alaska Adventurer pulled
Albert to his feet. He watched the massive, white ship lumber in from open water,
returning after a three-week absence to bring a fresh population of 500 travelers
mostly for a week-long vacation, as it always did from May through August.
Albert didn’t share in the general disdain for these “sunbirds”, as they were
sometimes called. He found the much-needed color in the otherwise bleak
socialscape exciting. Since, in his mind, he’d tested the local waters as
thoroughly as he felt capable, he couldn’t help but hope the Adventurer might bring the girl who
could end his protracted drought.

Follow Me on Twitter!Sign up for my Mailing ListAll writing is the original work of Brian Wright and may not be copied, distributed, re-printed or used any form without express written consent of the author. Find out here how to CONTACT me with publishing and/or use questions